Tuesday, October 13, 2009

So Gordon "I have a moral compass" Brown has been required to repay £12,400 in expenses for cleaning costs he paid to his brother for a the services of a cleaning woman.

This money was claimed for the cleaning of his London flat, in spite of the fact that as Chancellor he was at all times living in free accommodation at No 11 Downing Street and since 2007 he has had two grace and favour homes to choose from, as well as his main constituency home in Scotland.

Mr Brown bought the third floor apartment in Great Smith Street, near Westminster Abbey, from the administrators of the Robert Maxwell-run TV polling firm AGB Research in December 1992 for the bargain price of £130,000 - a price well below what estate agents at the time thought the property was worth - in circumstances that have always aroused suspicion.

Gordon Browns then closest associate was Geoffrey Robinson MP, who had been a director of the parent company of AGB Research Ltd until 1990.

Many felt at the time that it could not be a coincidence that one of the failed Maxwell companies, chaired by Geoffrey Robinson MP, went bankrupt, and one of its properties, a flat in Westminster, was bought by Gordon Brown MP, also a close friend of Geoffrey Robinson MP, and who was later made Paymaster General in the Treasury.

Today the flat is thought to be worth £700,000.

Gordon Brown assured the media when the expenses row first became public that the arrangement whereby he paid his brother thousands of pounds to sort out the cleaning and maintenance of the flat was within the rules.

But the real embarrassment must surely be that an independent commissioner - appointed by Mr Brown himself - has decided that the arrangement made by our Prime Minister is not acceptable and should not have been going on.

If there was the slightest smidgeon of integrity or honesty left in public life this would be a resigning matter.